…The groups behind the operation had a sense of humor about what they were doing. One Twitter account was named after Bruno Gianelli, a fictional character in The West Wing who pressed his colleagues to use ethically questionable “soft money” to fund campaigns.

A typical tweet read: “CA-40/43-44/49-44/44-50/36-44/49-10/16/14-52–>49/476-10s.” The source said posts like that — which would look like gibberish to most people — represented polling data for various House races.

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) The rest of this Daily Beast article on Vivek Murthy and, of people, Rand Paul, is not particularly interesting: but I wonder if Eleanor Clift has thought this through?

A surgeon general’s views on gun violence have never been a litmus test before, but Murthy got the attention of the National Rifle Association with this 2012 tweet: “Tired of politicians playing politics w/ guns, putting lives at risk b/c they’re scared of NRA. Guns are a health care issue.”

Background here and here: the short version is that it looks like the site – which reproduces Obamacare cancellation letters – may be subject to an organized fake Twitter spam report cabal*. The good news is, Twitter will eventually resolve this by auto-circular filing the fake spam reports, not that they’ll admit to that; such a policy is the only way that they’re able to keep any political content on Twitter at all, frankly.

Interesting post here on social media presences. More specifically, how easy it is to mock one up:

Who is Santiago Swallow? Well, if you have to ask, you’re obviously not keeping in touch with what is going on in the world.

The 42-year-old Swallow was born in Mexico, but then moved to the US to become one of the most revered gurus of the internet age. He has been described as ‘one of the greatest thinkers of the Millennial generation’.

Despite being in his 40s, Swallow retains his youthful appearance – his piercing eyes and blond mullet lend him the look of member of Duran Duran. But don’t be fooled by his image – Swallow is a serious player in new media. His upcoming book is predicted to define a generation. He has wowed delegates with his speeches at the TED and SXSW conferences.

He has more than 85,000 followers on Twitter. Or rather, he did have until Twitter suspended his account this week. But why would Twitter close the account of one of the most brilliant social media minds in the world?

The fact that Santiago Swallow doesn’t exist probably had something to do with it.

…it makes it way easier to just put up a story that you just want people to see, without having to feel obligated to natter on and on and on about it. Frex, this story; I could come up with five hundred words that could be summed up as ‘Interesting’… or I could just Tweet it instead.

I know that this is a kind of a meta post. Sorry; everybody’s home because everything’s closed.

Particularly when it comes to dealing with whatever the Left’s freaking out this week. 140 characters gives you a surprising amount of space with [which] to express yourself, but the platform is not really designed to permit long, complicated, drawn-out debates. What it is good for is providing information (particularly links) for people that – and this is important – the Other Side cannot jam. Unless you let them*.

Which is not to say that you shouldn’t do things on Twitter (or any other communications platform) that amuses you. Merely that there’s a difference between ‘entertaining’ and ‘effective,’ and ‘indulging idiots’ rarely falls under the latter category.

Moe Lane

*This, by the way, is why I generally don’t RT hate speech and deliberately break replies when I backhand/block somebody getting stroppy. Most of those people are desperately trying to waste my time, or waste the time of people on my side who have demonstrated that they can succeed at Twitter. I find it useful to make it clear that there’s no point to it.

…except that instead of being a seemingly-nonsensical and paradoxical statement designed to produce deeper philosophical, neurolinguistic, and or ethical insights, it’s an actual nonsensical and paradoxical statement designed to kill brain cells when you look at it too closely. Our example tonight comes from the Ask Democrats Twitter feed:

“Not on Twitter, but interested in asking a Q for House Dems today? Email AskDems@mail.house.gov”

@freddoso called that tweet the dumbest of the day: I think that he’s understating the extent to which it wins that particular contest.

Moe Lane

PS: Think about it. Just not for long enough to suffer permanent neural damage.

Real quick background. Apparently a Saudi prince that you’ve likely never heard of owns a portion of Fox News – as if anybody reading this actually freaking cares – and this had Media Matters for America… all in a tizzy? Yeah, I didn’t notice, either. Anyway, the Usual Suspects on the Left are all freaking out about this – largely in arenas where their particular shrieking can’t be heard over the din – with the general theme of ‘people shouldn’t support anything* owned by Saudi princes.’ So since that same prince has now bought a piece of Twitter, you can expect all those people to quit that service themselves, right?

PS: Of course this is the first that you’ve heard of the whole situation. Media Matters for America, remember? The only reason that they’re not mocked more is because we know that if they collapse as a group MMFA will likely be replaced by a group that’s more competent.

*No, this doesn’t mean that the Left now supports the Keystone ethical oil pipeline. Don’t be silly.